Did The IRS Try To Swing Election To Obama?

The IRS demanded, for example, that the Center for Constitutional Law "explain in detail your organization's involvement with the Tea Party."

 Engaged in selective leaks. This week, ProPublica, a liberal-leaning nonprofit journalism organization, revealed that the IRS had leaked it nearly a dozen pending applications, including one submitted by Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS.

 Covered it up. If this was all an innocent mistake, why then did acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller tell Republican senators in April 2012 that conservative groups weren't getting any special treatment, at least a month after learning they were? Another top IRS official appears to have misled Congress on four separate occasions last year.

And why is it that, as the New York Times reports, no one involved with the scandal at the IRS has been disciplined while "one in Cincinnati was promoted"?

In the end, the IRS managed to put its thumb on the political scale by squelching political activity on the right — some groups report curtailing get-out-the-vote efforts, spending piles of money on legal fees or disbanding altogether in the face of IRS inquisitions.

And all of it happened during a close and hotly contested presidential election where such mischievousness could make a real difference.

Does any of this sound like it's the result of a random bureaucratic snafu or the work of a couple of "rogue agents"?

Corruption: The inspector general's report on the IRS targeting of conservatives makes it seem like a case of bureaucratic bumbling. But the more we learn, the more it looks like a concerted effort to hobble Obama's political foes.

'Inappropriate criteria," "insufficient oversight" and "lack of managerial review." That's what led the IRS to target hundreds of conservative groups for intrusive, costly and lengthy scrutiny during their application for tax-exempt status, according to the IG report released on Tuesday.

In other words, it wasn't a politically motivated attack on conservative groups during a presidential campaign. It was just a case of some bad wording and a lack of good bosses.

Except that, as details of the IRS scandal emerge, it's increasingly giving the appearance of a wide-scale effort to tilt the playing field against conservative activist groups who might have been helpful to Republican candidates in the 2012 election, while at the same time coddling liberal groups helpful to Obama.

Consider what we now know the IRS did:

 Gave preferential treatment to liberal groups. On Tuesday, USA Today reported that while the IRS was hounding conservative groups and holding up their applications for tax-exempt status, it was quickly ushering liberal groups with names like "Progress Florida" and "Missourians Organizing for Reform" through the process.

USA Today found that in the 27 months after Feb. 2010, the IRS did not approve a single Tea Party application. Over those same months, however, dozens of applications submitted by liberal groups that were engaged in the same type of activities and were seeking the same tax status as the conservative ones sailed through the agency.

"As applications for conservative groups sat in limbo," USA Today reported, "groups with liberal-sounding names had their applications approved in as little as nine months."

Meanwhile, the IG found that of the 296 applications filed by conservative groups it examined, more than half were still in limbo, with some of them having been on hold for more than three years.

 Made unusual document requests. Not only did the IRS target conservative groups for extra scrutiny, it also asked for massive amounts of information that it couldn't possibly need to determine tax-exempt status.

Among them: donor names, blog posts, transcripts of radio interviews, resumes of top officers, board minutes and summaries of material passed out at meetings.

Some groups were asked about connections to other conservative groups or individuals.

The IRS demanded, for example, that the Center for Constitutional Law "explain in detail your organization's involvement with the Tea Party."

 Engaged in selective leaks. This week, ProPublica, a liberal-leaning nonprofit journalism organization, revealed that the IRS had leaked it nearly a dozen pending applications, including one submitted by Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS.

 Covered it up. If this was all an innocent mistake, why then did acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller tell Republican senators in April 2012 that conservative groups weren't getting any special treatment, at least a month after learning they were? Another top IRS official appears to have misled Congress on four separate occasions last year.

And why is it that, as the New York Times reports, no one involved with the scandal at the IRS has been disciplined while "one in Cincinnati was promoted"?

In the end, the IRS managed to put its thumb on the political scale by squelching political activity on the right — some groups report curtailing get-out-the-vote efforts, spending piles of money on legal fees or disbanding altogether in the face of IRS inquisitions.

And all of it happened during a close and hotly contested presidential election where such mischievousness could make a real difference.

Does any of this sound like it's the result of a random bureaucratic snafu or the work of a couple of "rogue agents"?

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